


Your breath is what revives me

by burnedphoenix



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Fake Character Death, Fallout, Feelings, Feels, Gen, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Slash, Reunions, h/c, hurt!danno
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-26
Updated: 2015-03-26
Packaged: 2018-03-19 17:45:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3618681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burnedphoenix/pseuds/burnedphoenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve died on a mission, at least that’s what the team is told.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your breath is what revives me

**Author's Note:**

> Apparently, I wrote this in March 2012. When I found it on my HD, I didn't even remember writing it, but as I did, I can just as well share it. 
> 
> Hope you like it.

He hadn’t known. If he had, he would have fought it with everything in him. He just hoped he could make the others believe that.

2 months, 7 days, 14 hours and 3 minutes. 

He had looked at his watch the moment he had stepped over the threshold of the plane’s door, leaving his team behind, just as he was doing now, walking silently back into Five-0 HQ. 

It’s completely dark except for the single light, illuminating the lone figure hunched over the desk, behind the closed glass doors. 

Everything looks just like the day he had left, except for one thing that causes his heart to constrict in his chest. Anger and rage burn through his body at the thought what his team, what Danny, must have gone through.

There, right next to the photo of a smiling Grace, is a photo of himself, framed, with a black ribbon across a corner. 

 

The funeral was beautiful, Joe had told him right before Steve landed his first punch to the bastard’s face. 

Mary-Ann had come all the way, he’d said, accepting the flag when it was presented to her, Danny at her side, the rest of 5-0 right there with them. Even Rachel had been there, holding on to a distraught Grace, offering silent support to her little girl and her ex-husband. Kono had been crying, just as Mary-Ann, the two of them clinging to each other on the way to the car. Chin had hesitated, before following them, escorting Rachel to her car, leaving Danny, on his knees in the dirt, and Grace clinging to each other, alone at the open grave side. 

That’s all Joe could tell him about that day. He’d had to go back to a briefing, leaving the chaos he’d created to sort itself out.

But it hadn’t, Steve had learned, while being debriefed. The horror of what had gone on, without him knowing, had seared itself into his brain. It was the soldier in him that was the only reason he made it through that meeting halfway sane. 

Looking at Danny now, from a distance, too scared to open that door and face the music, so to speak, Steve goes back over what else he has learned.

2 months and 2 days ago, roughly, a courier arrived at Five-0 Headquarters, bringing the message that Steven J. McGarrett had died in the line of duty, presenting the acting leader of the task force with the written confirmation and supposedly Steve’s dog tags. 

Gripping the cord around his neck, feeling the weight of the metal in his palm, the almost silent clinking sound loud in the emptiness of the room, Steve knows that they were not his, because _his_ tags are right where they belong. 

Taking a few silent steps, Steve stops again as Danny sits up, stares straight ahead and then reaches out, taking the picture of Steve from its place next to Grace’s and sighs. 

“So, the thing is, I’m stuck, Steve. Not only did you leave me to be head of Five-0, to juggle this political shit and investigations and making nice with the higher ups. Oh, no, you, Steven, you left me to try and hold together our _ohana_ , and that’s not fair.” 

He can see it, how Danny is practically shaking with it, before he gets to his feet, picture still clutched in his hands and paces across his office. “

“I can’t do this, Steve, we are _lost_ and _I_ don’t know what to do to find us! We can’t even _work_ efficiently anymore, Steve. Kono developed more of a hair trigger than you ever had, Chin is shutting everyone out, _everyone_ , Steven, even Malia and it’s breaking them apart again. And Gracie…”

The sob that strangles Danny’s voice breaks Steve’s heart, but he can’t make himself move. This, all of it, is his fault. Even if he had no idea it was happening.

“Gracie doesn’t understand, Steven, you were _never_ supposed to _die_! You’re super-SEAL-Steve, crazy invincible ninja guy, you’re Superman, how could you _fucking die on me_?!”

Danny is screaming and openly crying now, sagging back into his chair with hunched shoulders. He looks so small and broken, and it suddenly dawns on Steve, finally, that, not only had his team been told that he was dead, but no one had told them that he was _alive_ either.

Rushing forward, though in hindsight he would agree it wasn’t the best idea, Steve rips open the glass door, startling Danny so badly that the framed photo slips from his hands, breaking on the floor.

Without looking up to see who is there, Danny begins to rant and rave in a tone so cold and dead it makes Steve’s eyes sting. He’s spewing accusations and hateful words, while trying to pick up the pieces of broken glass. 

Steve sees the blood before Danny has time to curse again. Dropping to his knees, he reaches out for Danny’s hand. 

And that’s when Danny looks up, color visibly draining from his face, before he brings up one shaky, bleeding finger to poke Steve in the cheek. 

Steve smiles at his partner, taking his reaction as a good sign. The fist hitting his cheekbone seconds later landing him square on his ass, though tells him he’s wrong. Danny gets to his feet, cold hatred in his eyes, as he pulls his hair every which way, smearing blood all through the blond mess he calls a hairdo. 

The more Steve tries to explain, the more agitated Danny seems to get, so for once, Steve doesn’t try to keep going and just shuts up. Letting Danny rant himself dry sometimes is the only way to go, which Steve had learned the hard way long ago. 

But Danny doesn’t seem to get tired, he keeps going on and pacing back and forth until Steve finally has enough. Getting to his feet, he steps up behind Danny and just closes his arms around his partner, holding on tight while Danny tries to fight him off. Now is not the time to let go though, so Steve holds on, murmurs nonsense into Danny’s neck, along with _Danny_ and _I’m sorry_ and _I didn’t know_.

Danny finally deflates what feels like hours later and Steve loosens his hold, which allows Danny to turn in his arms and bring his own around Steve’s middle, holding on for dear life. That’s the moment Steve feels it. There is something pressing into his chest, other than his own dog tags, as Danny inhales deeply, over and over again, as if trying to make sure this isn’t some kind of fucked up dream. 

Carefully, Steve pushes Danny a few inches away, feeling his hand along Danny’s chest until it bumps into what he had felt earlier. It feels familiar, somehow, but foreign at the same time. It’s not something that belongs on Danny he thinks, bringing his other hand to his own front. It belongs on him, he realizes as his hands each close around a set of dog tags. 

Startled, he looks up and meets Danny’s wet gaze. The thought, that Danny was wearing dog tags that he thinks are Steve’s, makes Steve’s stomach do weird flippy things that he can’t comprehend.

Danny’s hand closing over his own, breaks him out of his musings as Danny realizes that Steve still has his _own_ tags around his _own_ neck. 

Cocking his head like a confused puppy, Danny brings his other hand up to Steve’s, tracing the tags with one finger before grabbing the string around his own neck to rip it off.

As Danny opens his mouth to speak, Steve realizes that they hadn’t said a word since Danny had turned around. 

“It’s true,” is the first thing Danny whispers, staring at the tags in his hand, then back at the ones around Steve’s neck. 

Steve isn’t sure if Danny means, that he’s alive and here, or that he believes him that he didn’t know, but right in that moment he doesn’t care, as long as Danny doesn’t hate him. 

A few more minutes pass in silence, before Danny looks up again, a frown on his face. Glancing at the tags in his hand, he throws them across the room, pushes Steve chest hard enough to make him stumble and demands answers.

“You tell me, right now and in detail, what the _bloody fucking hell_ happened?!”

And Steve does. Sitting them down on the chairs in Danny’s office, Steve begins with the part Danny knows, he was reactivated for a mission.

Then he follows up with the part Danny doesn’t know, and that, up until a few hours ago, he didn’t know either.

It was Joe’s idea, it turned out, sending him on this mission, faking his death to get to Wo Fat. The plan had apparently worked, but at what cost. 

Steve still doesn’t know why Joe hadn’t told the team the truth as soon as Wo Fat was down, what he thought that would accomplish other than making them all suffer for even longer.

Steve tells Danny about coming back, about getting debriefed and learning about himself being officially dead. About his team learning the news from a stranger, about Mary-Ann getting dragged into it, about the funeral, about Gracie, about all the broken people Joe’s plan left behind.

About coming to HQ and realizing no one had told them he was back and alive and that the whole thing wasn’t real. 

Steve tells him about hitting Joe, about going off at the man he thought of like a second father. 

When he finally looks up, after explaining everything, there are two things he notices. The first one is that Danny’s eyes have lost the cold hated they showed earlier and the other is that it’s getting light out. 

That explains, he thinks, the soreness in his throat. Apparently he had been talking most of the night without realizing it. Not only telling Danny about what he learned had happened on Hawaii, but also what he had gone through on his mission, classification be damned. After what they put his team through, they deserved answers. 

The sound of voices coming nearer breaks Danny out of it. Gesturing for Steve to stay put, he gives him a small smile before he steps out into the main area. 

Chin and Kono stop in their tracks as they see him; still in yesterday’s clothes, tear tracks on his face, hair ruffled and blood-streaked. 

“What happened!?” They ask, and Kono goes on with “Grace?” Thinking if Steve’s death didn’t break Danny down like this, at least in front of company, it could only be worse. 

But Danny just smiles and shakes his head. 

“Don’t freak,” he starts, looking back over his shoulder, feeling for the dog tags that are missing from his chest, “I have good news.”


End file.
